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60 years of McLaren history have produced many notable occasions, the anniversaries of which we cheerfully celebrate to this day. But what is notable, and what isn't, is something that isn’t always apparent at the time. For instance, 31 years ago, back in 1993, who would have known that a young Finn named Mika Häkkinen, jumping in for his first McLaren Qualifying session, would go on to have quite such a dramatic impact?

In the early 1990s, Mika Häkkinen was Formula 1’s most exciting young prodigy. He had won the 1990 British F3 Championship, at that point the premier junior formula, and tested for Benetton in F1 before signing to drive for Lotus in 1991.

Lotus, however, were struggling. Ayrton Senna had taken the team’s final F1 victory in 1987, and after that, a decline set in. Mika troubled the scorers only once in 1991, fifth at Imola in a season that also contained seven retirements and a DNQ in France. Things were a little better in 1992 as Mika scored six times, dragging Lotus to fifth in the Championship, but reliability issues meant that Mika and his teammate Johnny Herbert were walking back to the paddock on a regular basis.

Mika left for McLaren at the end of the season, who had just seen Gerhard Berger depart for Ferrari. Berger was replaced by IndyCar driver Michael Andretti, partnering Ayrton, and Mika began the season as the team’s Test Driver, knowing that his time would come.

After 13 rounds of the season, Senna had three wins, two second places and a Fastest Lap, while Michael was struggling to get a tune out of the MP4/8. He picked up three points in the first 12 races, and finally got on the podium at Monza – but it was too little too late. He was replaced by Mika for the Portuguese Grand Prix.

History records show Mika retiring after a crash at the circuit’s final corner on his McLaren debut, but what most of the paddock remembers is the 24 year-old Finn outqualifying his vastly experienced, triple World Champion team-mate – the driver after whom that last corner is named: Ayrton Senna.

Williams had been dominating that season. Damon Hill and Alain Prost locked out the front row in Portugal - Mika and Ayrton were the only drivers to get within a second of the FW15C. Mika was 0.949s down on Hill’s pole time, impressive for his debut, but more surprising was that Ayrton was even further back – five hundredths further back, to be precise.

Mika’s time raised eyebrows – but perhaps more outside the garage than within. At a time when the race drivers did a lot of in-season testing, there were ample opportunities to compare the drivers. McLaren were well aware of how very, very quick the Flying Finn was. And it didn't come as a surprise to Mika either.

“I was in Monaco when I heard that I would be racing in Portugal, and I was super-happy,” recalls Mika. “It’s an unbelievable feeling. It’s like winning the lottery. I knew I was quick. I didn’t think anybody in the world could be as quick as me. It was crazy. I would wake up in the mornings and think: ‘Mika, you’re fantastic’. I couldn’t wait to get to Portugal.”

The Mika who recounts this tends to roll his eyes at the unshakable conviction of his younger self – but the confidence came from experience rather than blind faith. “I’d done a lot of testing for McLaren over the year, so, I knew exactly what the performance of the car was. We had active suspension at that time, traction control, all the gizmos on the planet in the car. Power steering, power brakes, we had everything. And when I was developing that, I knew everything that was happening with the car.”

Mika arrived in Estoril to a feeding frenzy. Williams had secured the Constructors’ Championship, Prost was about to confirm his fourth Drivers’ Championship, and attention turned to other things. Michael being replaced by Mika was a big story at the time – but Mika wasn’t particularly keen to tell it. In 2023, Mika cuts a genial figure in the F1 paddock: always happy to stop for a chat and to sign autographs, usually laughing at something or other – but 30 years ago he cut a very different figure. Certainly never rude, but definitely not… chatty.

“I remember going into the press conference with Ayrton, and the media were very excited – but I wanted to keep a low profile,” he recalls. “Keke Rosberg, my manager at the time, wasn’t very happy about that. He thought it was my chance, with the whole world watching. I should open my mouth, tell everyone who I was. I thought it was not about what came out of my mouth but what I did on the track. I thought the best story would be if I was quick and beat Ayrton… and that’s what happened!”

Two World Championships, 25 Fastest Laps, 21 Poles, and 20 victories later, it’s easy to see that Mika had the chops to make Ayrton sweat – but Mika’s confidence at the time sounds like bravado. A debutant outqualifying their experienced team-mate is one thing… a debutant outqualifying Ayrton Senna at the height of his powers is something else, though Mika insists he was looking at it the other way around.

“I wasn’t really thinking about how I could beat him, I was thinking there was no way he could go faster than me! I knew I was quick, and I knew the car extremely well; I’d done a lot of laps and had lots of experience with how to get the optimum performance out of the tyres. My mindset was that it was going to be so so difficult – nearly impossible in fact – that anyone would go quicker than me!”

Mika’s confidence stemmed from the notion that his left-foot braking technique was going to give him an edge. In the modern era, every driver left-foot brakes but in the early 1990s, when the semi-automatic gearbox was still relatively new, and many drivers had learnt their trade in cars with a foot clutch, it was by no means universal.

“You look at Turn 1 in Estoril, there’s hardly any lift on the throttle, you just shift down a gear, turn in and full gas again,” says Mika. “I was left-foot braking, Ayrton was right-foot braking, and that’s going to take an extra millisecond: foot off the throttle, go onto the brake, go back onto the throttle. It would be impossible for him to be quicker than me – and that’s what happened. He was slower. Less than a tenth slower – but slower.”

The media were amazed, Mika was very happy, Ayrton, less so. When Senna asked Mika what he had done, the Finn was… perhaps a little less diplomatic than an older, wiser head would have been. “I made a joke, he went berserk and didn’t talk to me for two weeks! There were two more races that season, at Suzuka and Adelaide – and he kicked my ass! But I’ve got no bad feelings from the experience, he taught me a huge amount, and really showed me how much I had to learn. I went in thinking I was ready to win, but to be fastest in every session, fastest across a season, to be good with the media, good with the team, that takes time.”